Review

Motions, the sophomore EP from Indonesian collective A City Sorrow Built, is not a forgiving piece of music by any means. While their contemporaries, all playing a similar blend of post-rock infused European-style screamo in the vein of Envy, Raein, and Funeral Diner, share their raw emotion and constant dynamics, where these other acts utilize painstakingly crafted and inhumanly beautiful crescendos, A City Sorrow Built instead prefer to keep things to-the-point, raw, and chaotic. This is not, by any means, to say that the four tracks of Motions lose any of the pure emotion that this band's peers build their music around: indeed, it is utterly apparent to any listener that the musicians of A City Sorrow Built poured their hearts and souls into this record's disappointingly brief fifteen minutes. Rather, while others utilize meticulous and complex structures to paint their own portraits of love, life, and loss, this particular group throws aimless meandering and seamless production to the wind. Everything about Motions, from the production to the song structures to the musicianship, is rough and unpolished, totally lacking any form of needless pretension or aimlessness, and in this its music absolutely thrives. It still includes the obligatory post-rock passages and the necessary heavier climaxes, but the former are kept brief and are without fluff, while the latter are some of the most powerful and real musical displays of pain that can be found in the genre. It's not often that a screamo release comes along that displays this level of pure, unadulterated musical and thematic honestly, and it's even less frequent that one actually succeeds in doing so without sounding careless or overly sloppy, but A City Sorrow Built really have nailed this formula with Motions. All that's left to do is hope that they channel this newfound excellence into a more substantial release soon, because this group is one that is absolutely brimming with potential.

First off, excellent summary. No, seriously. I don't really know if it fits with the rest of your
review yet, but it piques my interest immediately.

While their contemporaries, all playing a similar blend of post-rock infused European-style
screamo in the vein of Envy, Raein, and Funeral Diner, share their raw emotion and constant
dynamics, where these other acts utilize painstakingly crafted and inhumanly beautiful crescendos, A
City Sorrow Built instead prefer to keep things to-the-point, raw, and chaotic.

Run-on, the combination of the extended description of the contemporaries and the "where" part makes
the sentence flow awkwardly.

Also, you should refer to bands as singular entities for future reference - learned that one from
the editor at Muzik Dizcovery. So when you say "the band prefer" that's a no-no.

utterly apparent

Feels just a bit weird

the four tracks of Motions lose any of the pure emotion that this band's peers build their
music around

How can they lose something that they never had in the first place? Something like "lack" would
probably be better.

poured their hearts and souls into this record's disappointingly brief fifteen minutes.

I don't know why, but I like this quite a bit. Good job.

How is "needless aimlessness" rough and unpolished? I'm missing the connection there.

It's not often that a screamo release comes along that displays this level of pure,
unadulterated musical and thematic honestly, and it's even less frequent that one actually succeeds
in doing so without sounding careless or overly sloppy, but A City Sorrow Built really have nailed
this formula with Motions.

Really nice.

Nice work overall with the review, I get the sense that it's so good because it's a post-rock
screamo blend that has some pure, raw emotion in it and you don't waste time with some showy
bullshit in the review's body like I tend to do sometimes. Good job.